Such Is Death (4 page)

“He was coming towards it.”

“But you'd know him again?”

“He was all muffled up.”

John Moore's comment was violent and profane and he left Sitwell wondering whether after all he had chosen the right career.

A F
ORTNIGHT
later Detective Inspector John Moore drove over to Newminster where an old friend of his, Carolus Deene, taught history at the Queen's School. His object, he assured himself, was to go over the problem with Deene and in doing so, in giving coherence to his thoughts in the matter as he stated his case, perhaps gain a clearer idea of it.

It would not be the first time he had talked over such things with Carolus, for he had been stationed in Newminster when, as a very young man, he was transferred to the CID and made his first investigations. Carolus then had just been Released and although an uncomfortably rich man had taken up a teaching appointment rather than be idle. His girl wife had been killed in an air raid and Carolus, a lonely young widower, wanted occupation.

The Queen's School, Newminster, is, as its pupils find themselves under the necessity rather often of explaining, a public school. A minor, a small, a lesser-known one, they concede, but still in the required category. Its buildings are old, picturesque and very unhygienic, and one of its classrooms is a showpiece untouched from the Elizabethan age in which the school was founded.

Some years before this time the school had been given a little reflected fame, for Carolus Deene published a successful book and did not scorn to print under his name ‘Senior History Master at the Queen's School. Newminster'. The book was called
Who Killed William Rufus? And Other Mysteries of History,
and in it Deene most ingeniously applied the methods of a modern detective to some of
the more spectacular crimes of the past and in more than one case seemed to have found new evidence from which to draw startling conclusions.

On the Princes in the Tower he was particularly original and perceptive and he disposed of much unreliable detail in his study of the murder of Edward II. The book was highly praised and sold a number of editions.

“It doesn't, unfortunately, make Deene a good disciplinarian,” said the headmaster. “His class is the noisiest rabble in the school.”

Carolus Deene was forty years old. He had been a good, all-round athlete with a half-blue for boxing and a fine record in athletics. During the war he did violent things, always with a certain elegance for which he was famous. He jumped out of aeroplanes with a parachute and actually killed a couple of men with his Commando knife which, he supposed ingenuously, had been issued to him for that purpose.

He was slim, dapper, rather pale and he dressed too well for a schoolmaster. He was not a good disciplinarian as the headmaster understood the word, because he simply could not be bothered with discipline, being far too interested in his subject. If there were stupid boys who did not feel this interest and preferred to sit at the back of his class and eat revolting sweets and hold whispered conversations on county cricket, then he let them, continuing to talk to the few who listened. He was popular but considered a little odd. His dressiness and passionate interest in both history and crime were his best-known characteristics in the school, though among the staff his large private income was a matter for some invidious comment.

The boys were apt to take advantage of his known interest in crime both ancient and modern. A master with a hobby-horse is easily led away from the tiresome lesson in hand into the realms of his fancy. He may or may not realize this as the end of the school period comes and he finds that he has talked for three-quarters of an hour on
his favourite subject and forgotten what he was supposed to be teaching.

Carolus Deene was very well aware of his weakness but he regarded his twin interests of crime and history as almost indistinguishable. The history of men is the history of their crimes, he said. Crippen and Richard III, Nero and the latest murderer to be given headlines in newspapers were all one to him, as his pupils delightedly discovered.

Carolus lived in a small Queen Anne house hidden, with its charming walled garden, in the old part of the town. He was looked after by a married couple named Stick who had been with him for a good many years and threatened to leave him every time he became involved in what Mrs Stick called ‘nasty police cases'. She was a formidable little woman, an inspired cook and housekeeper, but so stiff with respectability that she suffered every time Carolus had a caller of whom she disapproved.

When John Moore reached the house that December evening she recognized him at once.

“Mr Deene's out,” she said curtly.

“At the school?”

“I couldn't say, I'm sure,” said Mrs Stick, peering at Moore closely through her steel-rimmed spectacles.

“I'd better go over there,” suggested Moore.

“You'd better do nothing of the sort. Mr Deene mustn't be disturbed while he's teaching.”

“Oh, that will be all right, Mrs Stick. He knows me.”

“I daresay he does, but it's not to say he wants policemen running round under his feet when he's giving his lessons.”

“Shall I wait for him then?”

Mrs Stick was torn between unpleasant alternatives but at last said, “I suppose you'd better.” She stood aside for him. “You wipe your feet though and don't bring all that mud into my clean hall.”

When Moore was sitting by the fire she brought him a tray of drinks.

“It wouldn't be a policeman if he didn't want these,”
she reflected aloud. “I hope you're not going to start dragging Mr Deene into any more cases, are you? We had quite enough after that last one.”

“No. I've just come to talk over something and hear his views.”

“You know what that will mean. Off he'll go again and we shan't know from day to day what murders he may be mixed up in. I was only saying to Stick …”

They heard the front door and in a moment Carolus was with them and greeting Moore.

“I'm glad to see Mrs Stick has been looking after you,” he said with some amusement while the little woman was still in the room.

“It was only to stop him racing round the school showing everyone what company you keep,” said Mrs Stick. “What would the headmaster say, I'd like to know, if he found a policeman come to get you?”

“He hasn't come to get me, Mrs Stick. Only—unless I'm mistaken?—to have a little chat about Selby-on-Sea.”

“So that's it! I read about it in the paper. As soon as I saw it my heart jumped into my mouth. I said to Stick, I said, ‘It's to be hoped Mr Deene doesn't get himself mixed up in this,' I said, ‘or who's to say
he
won't have someone after him with a coal-hammer, same as that poor fellow did.' If I'd known that's what this was about I'd never have let him over the threshold.”

“Stay and have something to eat, John? What have we, Mrs Stick?”

“I don't know whether there'll be enough. I'm not saying I couldn't do a little extra of the eggs if it comes to it. It's the thought of you sitting here talking about all this nastiness.”

“I'm sure you can manage it.”

“I suppose I shall have to. There's oafs arler die able and patty der gibyer, if you want to know. And I've got up a bottle of the Montrashy. But how I'll be able to cook, knowing what I do, I can't bear to think.”

“Oeufs à la diable,
devilled eggs and
pâté de gibier,
game pie,” translated Carolus. “Very nice and very appropriate, Mrs Stick.”

Her face showed no appreciation of this praise as she left the two men.

“Now, John, tell us all about it,” said Carolus.

“It's a bastard, this one,” began Moore. “Nothing to get hold of at all.”

“No motive?”

“Bags of motive. But nothing to connect any of those who had motive with the crime.” Carolus waited. “This man Ernest Rafter who was killed had only arrived in Selby that afternoon. He'd been staying in a lodging-house near King's Cross station. He was a pretty bad hat, I gather.”

“In what way?”

“Collaborator,” said Moore.

For both of them this was sufficient, for they belonged to a generation of men among whom these things were not forgotten.

“Japs?”

“Yes. It's an old story and I've been through the MI 5 files. He was so useful to the Japanese that they took the trouble to protect him from his fellow-prisoners who would certainly have knocked him off. So the Japs gave out that he had been shot trying to escape and moved him to another camp under another name. He was reported missing believed killed and in due course his family got him officially presumed dead.”

“I see. And his family live in Selby-on-Sea?”

“Most of them, yes. It's a large family.”

“Money involved?”

“Yes. Some. The father died soon after the war and left a few thousands, divided equally among his three sons and two daughters. The murdered man's share has long since gone to the others.”

“So that if he had turned up alive?”

“He would have had no legal claim, I gather, but a very strong moral one. Besides it would have been an infernal nuisance to them all. One of the brothers is a
solicitor and none of them was likely to welcome this Ernest.”

“You say a moral obligation. Are they the kind of people who would have recognized that?”

“I should say certainly. They're supposed to be a bit close, I believe, but quite honourable.”

“Then hardly the kind of people to have killed him with a hammer?”

“Well, no. But, as we both know, there is no ‘kind of people' for murder. These are the only ones known to have a motive of any sort and most of them, perhaps all of them, were in the town that night.”

“I see.”

“We've traced Rafter's movements. The name he took when he was in Japanese hands was Randle. After the war he succeeded in reaching Australia and bummed his way around there till a few months ago. He must have known his father was dead but the old man was a bit of a miser. No one thought he had more than a few hundred pounds to leave and I suppose Rafter didn't think it worth while admitting his identity for that. His collaboration was rather a famous one in its way. He might even have been charged with war crimes.”

“Or treason.”

“Then I suppose he got news of what had happened or he was desperate. At all events he came home. Reached London two weeks before he came down to Selby.”

“Oh. Two weeks. Then he may have been in communication with the family?”

“They all deny this. They all say they had heard or seen nothing to make them doubt that he was dead. He certainly went to Somerset House and saw his father's will. He came down to Selby on the 4.15 that day and put up at the Queen Victoria. He went into the bar, knocked back half a dozen doubles and told one of the barmaids he had been presumed dead and that his ‘resurrection' would not be welcomed by certain people in the town. Then, although it was a beastly night with a cold wind, he insisted on taking a walk on the promenade.”

“There is nothing to suggest that he had spoken to any of the family then?”

“Nothing. He asked to use the telephone and came back to the bar to say he could not get through. His movements otherwise don't leave much opportunity. His train got in on time at 5.40 and he went straight to the Queen Victoria. He went up to his room for a wash and was in the bar by half past six or so. He did not leave it, except when he tried to telephone, till 9.30 or thereabouts. Then he walked straight down to the promenade, passing a man on his beat at about twenty to ten. At 10.50 our man found him dead in the farthest shelter—right at the end of the promenade.”

“Had he got his wits about him, this man of yours?”

Moore smiled.

“An enthusiast, anyway. Rather turned his head, having found the corpse. Sitwell, his name is and he's still in his early twenties. Thinks I'm pretty unappreciative. But he seems to have got his times right, which is the main thing.”

“I gather it was done with a sledge hammer.”

“Oh no. That's press exaggeration. It was a good heavy hammer such as is used for breaking coal, but not so big that it could not have been carried to the place unnoticeably by man or woman. It's the sort of thing that might be found in any house. Nothing of the sort has been reported missing or stolen. We're unlikely to trace its ownership, for it might be ten years old or more and thousands of them are sold all over the country.”

“Finger prints?”

“Not one.”

“Anything left anywhere near the body?”

“Nothing really. The technical boys have got some threads and particles, I believe, but they could only be any use as additional evidence if we had our man, and would be dubious then. Rafter apparently never took his hands out of his pockets so he wasn't clutching that traditional piece of cloth. Once we've found someone it
is possible that the microscope will help, but it tells us nothing useful now.”

“Is it certain that the man had been killed with the hammer?”

“As far as expert opinion goes, yes.”

“At least you've got the time narrowed down nicely. How far was it from where Rafter passed the policeman to the shelter?”

“At the most fifteen minutes' walk for a man with drink in him and the wind against him. It could be done in ten.”

“So the earliest possible time, if your man is accurate, is 9.50. And the latest, say 10.40. That's a very small margin, John.”

“Yes. But what's the good of it?”

“Do you know who was along that part of the promenade at the time?”

“We know one or two. Our man unfortunately let one get away.”

John Moore told Carolus of Sitwell's observations, including his meeting with Lobbin, whom Moore described as a very good chap.